


The Glue

by novel_concept26



Category: Pitch Perfect (2012)
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-06
Updated: 2012-10-06
Packaged: 2017-11-17 04:10:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/547470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novel_concept26/pseuds/novel_concept26
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's not the girl who does this. She holds it together. She's the glue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Glue

  
She’s not the girl who does this. She’s known plenty of girls who do—fall at the drop of a hat, land squarely on their faces, damaging every inch of pride along the way—but it isn’t her. She’s not that person. She holds it together. She’s the glue.

She has to be, with a bestie like Aubrey, may the gods of acapella help them all. Aubrey’s great and all, but she does have this slight tendency toward melodrama, and it can be…taxing. Taxing, and far too difficult to deal with her own flare for the dramatics on top of it, so Chloe makes her choice and sticks the landing as clean as she can: Aubrey gets to be all about the drama, and the hysterics, and the casual public vomiting event, and Chloe—

Chloe is the other girl. The one who stands just behind and to the left, who holds the clipboard and smiles her whitest smile, and never ever aims her ship toward the danger zone. It’s just not something she can afford.

And, she tells herself, it’s worth it. The Bellas will be strong this year, between Aubrey’s leadership and her determination to keep it all together, and they will make a fresh start. An impressive start. One that leaves no room for foolishness.

Or for falling for the first spunky alt girl to flash her a crooked smile.

***

Not that Beca leads with a smile. In fact, for a second there, Chloe actually catches herself doubting whether the tiny girl— _so_ tiny, like…snap-you-in-half-with-a-glance tiny, and why does that send a slight tingle down her spine, anyway?—even can fashion an expression of pleasure upon her thin lips. It’s strange that she’d think, and stranger still that she’d care, but here she is.

Kind of staring.

Freak.

The girl doesn’t notice them at first, angled at the head of their booth and practically throwing fliers into the hands of any passerby lacking a Y chromosome, and Chloe’s just a little grateful for that. It’s bizarre enough that she’s noticing this girl in the first place—tiny as can be, with about seventeen earrings and her brown hair tucked back behind her ears. Cute ears. Nicely sized. It’s weird that she’s noticing that, too.

Then again, everything’s been pretty groggy since last year’s debacle. Weird might well have hit a whole new plateau by this point.

It’s hard to imagine, for a second, a girl like this smiling much at all; she keeps her chin up almost defiantly, daring the meandering students to say a word, and yet Chloe gets the sense that she doesn’t really want to be challenged at all—or even seen, judging from the way she veers restlessly from booth to booth, eyes sliding away from anyone who might work up the nerve to say hello. There was a word for girls like her back in high school, and that word was _terrifying_. Or possibly _Carrie_. Any way you spin it, she’s not the type of girl Chloe tends to associate with, because she’s not the type of girl _Aubrey_ would be caught dead giving the time of day to, and _oh_ , she really needs to be looking away now.

She without a doubt doesn’t have time for this sort of thing, but when the girl wanders by, fingertips bouncing lightly off of her jeans like she’s not entirely sure how to walk and possess hands at the same time, it’s like her acapella needs develop a mind all their own. Or maybe it’s something else talking, something she _so_ does not have the energy to deal with. She’s going to go with the acapella thing and forget everything else.

She’s pretty sure the girl’s eyes are blue, but it’s sort of hard to tell under the weight of all that thick black mascara. The kind of make-up a girl layers on when she doesn’t want the world to know where her head's at, Chloe knows. She pastes on her brightest smile all the same, thrusting a leaflet toward the girl’s chest without thinking.

The invitation goes pretty south pretty fast, but the girl does smile once or twice while shooting them gracelessly down. It’s a smile Chloe can’t help but mirror back, though she can feel the heat of Aubrey’s rage melting off in waves, and she knows that’s going to be hell to mellow out later on.

The girl says she can’t even sing, and doesn’t bat an eye when Aubrey delivers one of her scathing insults, and neither grins, nor glares when Chloe makes eye contact for just a second longer than is necessary. The girl is in a league all her own, it’s clear from the very start, and Chloe kind of loves it already.

Which is totally not the game plan.

***

Neither, technically, is stalking the new girl in the shower, but shit happens, and here they are. It’s actually kind of Beca’s fault, because she _is_ the one who lied her tiny, pale, perfect little face off about the not singing thing. If this isn’t singing, Chloe will happily march right up to Aubrey and admit what’s going on in her head here and now.

The look on Beca’s face when she bursts through the curtain and has her _ah ha!_ moment is marvelous, and it manages to distract for a second from the glaring reality of the situation: namely, that she’s just _burst through a shower curtain_ and is now standing a foot away from a very naked, very pretty stranger.

One who is squirming more uncomfortably than a puppy in a turtleneck to get away from her, and _wow_ , she has to do something before this gets too awkward for words.

Beca looks at her like she’s batshit crazy when she demands more bars of the song. Her mouth falls open, and her eyes go wide, and, yes—they’re blue. Fiercely so. That’s more attractive than it needs to be.

The whole picture, actually, from scraggly ponytail to the floral tattoo on the girl’s right shoulder to the way her eyebrows knit tersely together, is more attractive than it needs to be. Chloe clears her throat.

She’s the glue, and glue avoids dramatics at all costs, but when push comes to shove and nothing else is working to get the stingingly attractive new girl with the gorgeous voice into the upcoming Bellas audition, well—sacrifices must be made. And if that sacrifice happens to look an awful lot like inching across the miniscule shower stall and running her mouth until Beca throws in the towel and stretches those vocal cords at last…

Her voice really is admirable, if a little unpolished, and Chloe likes to think they flow quite nicely together. Beca even sort of smiles at her as they fall silent, her gaze never breaking once from Chloe’s face.

Which probably has more to do with her desperate desire not to get an extended eyeful of naked than anything else, but Chloe doesn’t mind thinking eye contact is both respectable and wildly sexy anyway.

***

It isn’t the first time she’s had a _thing_ for a girl, so that really isn’t the part that bothers her about this whole situation. Girls are beautiful, and interesting, and somehow much more complex than men ever could be, and she likes that. She likes having to sift through the puzzle pieces, settling each one into place before she can feel satisfied with the relationship. She likes thinking about how she feels in terms of more than just _sex_ and _touch_ and _want_.

Though there’s plenty of want here, make no mistake.

It isn’t the girl part that grates on her nerves so much as the _Aubrey’s going to hate this_ part. Aubrey is controlling, and reasonably mental, and has way too much on her Daddy-bought plate, but she is also strong, and smart, and remains steadfast at Chloe’s back when no one else comes close. Aubrey is off her gourd half the time, but there is something wonderful about her that Chloe has never been able to shake, and her opinion means more than just _a lot_. It’s everything these days, with the pair of them playing veteran two-shot. They have each other, and that’s all there is to it; they haven’t even tried to need anyone else in months.

So that she might feel something for this new girl, with the spike through her ear, and the insolence in her eyes, and the penchant for pairing tank tops with tight jeans and those ridiculous little flannel shirts—it’s bad. It’s bad, not because she’s got lady parts to go with the lady song in their lady hearts, but because she is every inch the woman Aubrey is not. She is sharp, and brash, and her smile swings crooked at the edges, and there is just something there that Chloe hasn’t seen before. Something Aubrey could never dream of tapping into.

There is _risk_ in those dark blue eyes, in that tenuous smile, and _that_ —that is the problem.

Aubrey is her best friend, Aubrey is her grounding force, and Aubrey is so not approving of the things Beca embodies. Not the smirk that toys at the corner of her lips, or the sprawl of her legs, or the knowing glance she exchanges with Fat Amy while Aubrey is dictating their Master Plan for success. Not the way she brushes her hair behind her ears with her middle finger, or the way her hands drum out silent beats on her knees when she should be listening intently, or the way her gaze slides to Chloe every couple of minutes, as if to reassure herself that _someone_ is looking out for her.

Chloe is pretty sure Beca wouldn’t be caught dead admitting she needs someone to look out for her.

She’s more than pretty sure Aubrey would hate Chloe looking out for anyone who isn’t _them_.

It’s amazing how little time it takes to get so damn messy, standing between them both.

***

She hasn’t been with Aubrey in a long time— _been with_ , like girlfriends who never assign a title, like best friends who kiss and then walk away without a word, like twin souls behaving like uneasy strangers after a night that should probably never be repeated—but it still feels uncomfortably like cheating, when Beca catches her eye on the quad and smiles. A simple smile, with no added seduction or thought, but it somehow feels like more—probably because this is Beca, who doesn’t seem to have the first clue how to talk to another girl without smirking, or rolling her eyes, or zoning out entirely.

She sees her around a lot, drifting with her hands in her pockets and those enormous headphones cinched around her neck, head tilted back to inspect the clouds. Rarely with anyone else—and, if she is, it’s Fat Amy; they make an unlikely little pair, with Beca’s stoic, practiced disinterest butting up against Amy’s nonstop wisecracks, but they seem to have genuinely hit it off somewhere along the way. Not that she’s noticed for any given reason. Not that she’s _jealous_. Not that she thinks Beca is sharing herself at all beyond a flash of wit here or there, because Beca, she’s realized, doesn’t _share_.

Which is something that, strangely, doesn’t seem so different from Aubrey after all. Which Aubrey would hate. Which is why Chloe is just _so_ not going there.

It’s messy, and it’s problematic, but when she spots Beca sitting alone beneath a knarled tree on a Wednesday, she can’t resist the inclination to skip over and plop down on the grass. Beca, one arm wrapped around her knee, glances almost furtively up from her massive Macbook.

She’s like a trapped animal, somehow, with her hair swinging forward to curtain her face and her eyebrows arched in preparation for attack. Chloe shakes her head.

“Hi,” she greets brightly, and jabs her knuckles lightly against Beca’s shirtsleeve. One eyebrow lifts higher.

“Hey.”

This girl is nothing like the things she should want in the world—not bright, not open, not offering the barest hint of herself up to be read or understood—and she knows she should probably stand right back up again and go off in search of Aubrey, but—

“Whatcha doing?”

She can physically _see_ Beca’s restraint in the rigidity of her shoulders and the way her eyes flicker shut to prevent an instinctive eyeroll. It’s painfully adorable, in some sad, strange way.

“Nothing.” A slim hand sweeps forward, easing the lid of the laptop shut. Chloe reaches up without thinking and pries the headphones loose from her ears, draping them back around her neck. Beca shrugs her off uncomfortably.

“Didn’t look like nothing,” Chloe challenges, leaning back against the tree trunk and extending her legs as far as they’ll go in either direction. Cardio takes energy she isn’t particularly willing to give up right now, but a nice stretch always does the body good, and is Beca actually _looking_?

The second the thought crosses her mind, Beca’s eyes are darting away again, her bottom lip pulling between her teeth.  
“Just messing,” she mumbles. “With stuff. You know.”

She doesn’t, because Beca is the _least_ sharey person on planet Earth, and this is probably the biggest waste of time imaginable…but there’s just something about the comfortable weight of a thin shoulder knocking into hers when Beca shifts to cross her legs that makes it impossible to get up and walk away. She smiles, leaning forward and raking her fingertips across the grass between her spread ankles.

“So?”

“So what?” Beca replies guardedly. She pulls the Macbook closer to herself, protective and uncertain. Which is kind of lame, because it’s not like Chloe hasn’t seen her naked already. At that point, there can’t be much more to hide.

It’s funny, how clearly Beca doesn’t seem to realize that.

“What do you think about the Bellas?” Chloe presses. Some of the tension sags from Beca’s shoulders, her breath blowing out in one long puff.

“They’re…interesting,” is all she says, dragging her fingers through her hair and leaning back on her elbows to peer up at the branches above them. “And possibly psychotic.”

“You’re one of us,” Chloe reminds her without a hint of indignation—because, truthfully, Aubrey’s psychosis is unquestionable, which probably means she’s at least as bad herself. It’s what makes them strong, in their own way: their drive to be better than they’ve ever been before, better than any jerk-ass boy or the mountainous odds stacked against them. It’s exactly what will lead them to the finish line.

And, though Aubrey will hate her for even suggesting it, she has the nagging feeling it will be Beca who eventually drags them to victory.

“You took the oath,” she continues, grinning broadly when Beca snorts and cracks her neck.

“Good oath. Totally think I’ve seen that shit on some of those cop shows. Y’know—with the Bloods and the Crips, and all that crap?” She pauses, thoughtful, then adds, “Or in The Craft. You guys aren’t big on the trying to contact some almighty power source, are you?”

“We save our sorcery for every third Saturday of the month,” Chloe mock-confides, jarring her shoulder into Beca’s skinny arm and laughing. The wry smile she earns is absolutely worth the sudden drop in her stomach, the one that is way too dramatic and _way_ too beyond her control to be respectable.

They sit in silence for a while after that, Beca staring up at the sky while Chloe does her best not to stare at Beca. It’s oddly pleasant, not to have to talk, or reaffirm, or _be_ anyone in particular. She wonders if Beca feels it, too.

She wonders what Beca feels at all.

***

This Jesse kid is kind of getting on her nerves.

It’s not that he lacks the attractive qualities she often appreciates in guys like him: the kind eyes, the puppy-dog-tousled grin, the voice and arms of a Greek god (assuming the Greeks could really rock an 80s power ballad; she must have dozed through that part of History). It’s not that he lacks anything at all, really; he seems to be quick on the draw, and a real sweetheart to boot. Even if he _is_ a bona-fide Treblemaker.

The thing that’s getting on her nerves is less _who_ he is and more _how_ he is—all comfortable smiles and swinging arms and feet up on the cramped little couch Beca nests in. He’s casual, and uncomplicated, and last week, she crashed right into Beca’s dorm without knocking to find them unconscious over a laptop, her head cushioned on his broad chest.

It was, Beca assured her upon waking and abruptly springing to her feet, utterly platonic, and dumb, and God, what kind of sadist forces someone to sit through _The Godfather_ , anyway? It was nothing at all, and yet, Chloe thinks she can read something there, lurking beneath the cynicism and the long breath Beca drags in as he picks up his laptop and backpack and flashes a cheeky peace sign on his way out the door. It’s not something she can judge for, or comment on—as if Beca would even deign to discuss it in the first place—but it pulls at her all the same, the way a bad dream hovers at the back of your mind despite a full day of sunshine.

She wants to talk about it to _someone_ , and that someone should absolutely be Aubrey, but for the fact that Aubrey is developing this semi-violent vendetta of sorts against everything Beca is. She sees it at rehearsal more and more: the fold of Beca’s arms across her chest, her feet set apart in a wary _fuck you, friend_ stance, and the glint of metal edging Aubrey’s tight smile. If they don’t hate each other, they will soon enough, as if this couldn’t get more awkward and unpleasant. She’s not sure what to do when that pissing match finally reaches its peak.

For now, she can’t talk to Aubrey without Aubrey going all _Xena, Warrior Acapella-ian_ on her ass, so she finds herself settling on the next best thing.

Utterly unintentionally, that is.

“You’ve got the hots,” Amy insists, plunking down behind her in this art appreciation class they share—one that admits everyone from eager, shivering freshmen to bleary-eyed, easy-A-seeking seniors—and jabbing her in the back of the neck with her pen. Chloe swivels as quickly as seven A.M. will allow, biting her lip.

“Sorry?”

“You’ve got a _squeeeeze_ ,” Amy sing-songs, her accent made all the more muddled by the rasp of not quite enough sleep. “I’ve seen it. Your goo-goo eyes are quite charming, actually.”

Chloe opens and closes her mouth, rubbing at her neck awkwardly. Her throat’s been feeling weird for a couple of days now—discomfort, probably, from being trapped between her best friend and this quirky girl who insists on chipping her consistently-black nail polish and wearing clunky lesbian boots—and Aubrey has been texting half-baked rants all night, and she is just _not_ in the mood for this today.

“It’s nothing,” she mutters. Amy grins.

“Got a thing for the _bad girl,_ ” she goes on, and ducks with remarkable grace when Chloe rolls her eyes and chucks a pen cap at her head.

That it would be a girl who calls herself _Fat Amy_ who gets under her skin is just far too fitting.

***

Beca looks ridiculous in her Bellas uniform, even Chloe has to admit. The skirt pulls all wrong around her legs—nice legs, _exceptionally_ nice legs, but Chloe would be willing to bet money Beca hasn’t looked twice at a dress in years—and she can’t seem to settle on how many buttons are _too many buttons_ , and the scarf just looks downright grandmotherly, knotted loosely around her throat.

It’s adorable.

Chloe is beginning to hate herself for all of this, just a little bit.

They’re in her room—Beca’s has become relatively uninhabitable, what with her frightening roommate glaring Asian daggers at all hours—preparing for their first real gig as a team, and though she intellectually understands a frat party isn’t _all that_ important, the fact that it’s important to Aubrey—earth-shatteringly so, in fact—is more than enough to send her sanity hurtling toward the edge of Crazytown. That, coupled with Aubrey’s now-24/7 frenzied texts and this ever-present _thing_ Jesse has taken to doing around Beca, like he's Peter Pan’s frigging shadow or something, is more than enough to make it all way less fun than it ought to be.

And then there are the nodes.

She hasn’t talked about it yet, hasn’t told anyone at all—not even Aubrey, because Christ knows the last thing they need is a nervous breakdown today—but she hasn’t stopped thinking about it since the diagnosis. Singing is all she loves, all she’s _ever_ loved, and to think something might rattle that adoration is just—

“You good?” Beca asks, glancing at her over one shoulder as she tugs uncomfortably at the edge of her skirt for the forty-seventh time. Chloe pastes on a smile and nods. Her feet swing off the edge of her mattress, her hair bouncing around her shoulders. She is exactly as calm as she should be, on the outside.

“Peachy,” she says, because Beca’s eyes are narrowing suspiciously, her mouth going thin the way Chloe has realized it does when she’s thinking hard about something. “And also slightly keen. You going to be okay in that skirt?”

It isn’t that Beca isn’t _pretty_ this way; it’s just that it doesn’t look like _her_ , not even a little bit, and Chloe has come to realize that the _look_ is a large part of what makes Beca so… _Beca_. It’s a thing she does, a role she clings to, as if by draping herself in leather jackets and rolled-up sleeves, she can forget whatever insecurites are bounding around inside that tiny little head. Chloe has seen just enough of the girl to be aware that, for her, appearance is key—and everything else gets swept under the rug, protected from the world at all costs.

The more time she spends around Beca, the sadder that reality makes her.

“I’m fine,” Beca grunts, evidently giving up on magically transforming the navy blue skirt into a pair of grunge jeans using only the power of her eyes. She pivots away from the mirror and flops down on the bed, her head resting tentatively against Chloe’s knee.

It’s a new thing, the physical contact initiated by anyone _not_ named Chloe, and she’s waiting for the habit to dissolve before it really manages to form. Beca doesn’t seem to touch anyone if she can help it, barring the occasional knock of shoulders during choreography run-throughs; she makes a show of wrinkling her nose and glaring at anyone who makes a grab for her hand, or shoulder, or who tries to—God forbid—wrap her up in a hug, no matter how amiable their intentions. Even Amy receives a hell of a scowl when, one afternoon out of nowhere, she attempts to swing Beca right off of her feet in the middle of rehearsal.

But they’ve been doing this hanging out thing a couple of times a week, studying and dodging Kimmy Jin with everything they’re worth, and it sometimes feels as though Beca’s concrete-and-steel-enforced walls are crumbling. Not much, and not for longer than the span of a few seconds, but still: it’s a start.

“You think it’s going to be okay?” Beca asks quietly after a second of just staring at their reflection in the mirror. Her fingers tap against the comforter, plainly uneasy. Chloe tries not to stare at the swell of cleavage blossoming from the juncture of her awkwardly-buttoned blouse.

“Sure,” she says unconvincingly—because, in all honesty, they’re kind of the biggest trainwreck she’s ever seen in her life, and _Christ_ , Aubrey is going to shit a brick if they screw this one up. And then who will be left picking up the pieces, dragging each one back into place and punching it down until it fits in a space that’s just a fraction too small, forcing Aubrey to keep it together, hold it together, _function_ like it’s just the two of them—like it used to be—before—

“Right,” Beca agrees, and huffs out a breath. She sits up, too fast, and smiles that half-crooked smile Chloe has been seeing in her dreams for weeks now. “We’re gonna rock this bitch.”

It’s really no surprise to either of them when _rocking_ turns out to look a lot more like crashing and burning like they’re being paid to do it.

***

Aubrey is getting steadily worse, even after they just barely scrape through the Regionals platform, and Beca does a quick overnight stint at the police station for a misunderstandng, and her throat still hurts, and everything just feels so _weird_ these days. The only bonus is in Jesse no longer playing helicopter around Beca’s room, which doesn’t actually make sense to Chloe at all, but doesn’t much matter. The point is, he’s elsewhere, which means it’s Chloe who takes up his vacancy on Beca’s bumpy little fold-out couch.

The nights she spends over here are the closest to awesome she feels anymore, though they’re rarer than she’d like—but the thing about having a massive, soul-crushing thing for a girl who kind of seems to hate people is that you really can’t up and _tell_ her about it. Or, really, let anything slip at all, for fear she’ll race across the country to get away from you. So being here once a week instead of once a day is probably for the best, unfortunate though it is.

Besides, spending a wealth of time at Beca’s, listening to her newest mixes—which she is _so_ mad about Beca not sharing sooner, because this stuff is _incredible_ —and passing out on a pillow that smells like cinnamon and hairspray is wonderful, but it takes a distracting amount of time away from the things she promised herself she’d achieve this year. Most importantly, keeping Aubrey from losing her shit in the most absolute way possible.

She’s the glue, and glue only works if it’s put into place—right where Aubrey needs her to be.

“She’s so _infuriating_ ,” her best friend is ranting now, kicking at a chair in their rehearsal space. The others have just left in a flurry of anxiety and darting glances after yet another failed dance camp, and Aubrey looks exactly as she has for two weeks now: blonde hair tumbling loose around her pink cheeks, eyes bright with a fervent madness that makes Chloe slightly uncomfortable to witness, teeth gnashing around a name Chloe wishes she would stop uttering altogether.

“She’s not that bad,” she says, as diplomatically as she knows how. She’s getting sick of hearing it—how maddening Beca is, how rebellious her ideas and flustered her technique, how downright _wrong_ she has been ever since joining the team in the first place—but once Aubrey gets going, she can be all but impossible to knock off track. Especially after a day like this one, with Beca once again insisting that they need to be _different_ to be better, that tradition is nothing without a little variety.

It’s impressive, really, that someone so quiet and so uninclined toward teamwork has become so invested in their road to victory. Chloe would be proud, if not for the glint that worms its way into Aubrey’s eye every time Beca opens her mouth.

She wishes she had known, before falling for this girl, how hard it can be to love someone your best friend wants to punch in the throat.

“She _is_ that bad, Chloe,” Aubrey informs her furiously. “She’s that bad. She’s the actual aca-worst, and I swear to God, if she tries to push her damn— _songs_ one more time—“

Chloe grits her teeth, turning her phone between her hands and forcing a nod. It vibrates pleasantly against her palm: the third text in a row. Her eyes skid across the name on the screen, heart thudding in her chest.

“Is that her?” Aubrey shrills right in her ear. “Oh my God, that’s actually her! Tell her—tell her—“

She has no idea what Aubrey wants her to say, and doesn’t care, which might be the worst thing about this whole deal. She loves Aubrey, and she’s supposed to be bending over backwards to make her feel supported, but this is really getting insane. They don’t sleep, or eat, or watch movies, or do anything anymore but rehearse the same moves over and over again until their bones ache with the strain of it all. It’s insane, out of control, and she thinks maybe it would be better just to call the whole thing off—

But then Aubrey looks at her with her lip between her teeth and her eyes all stupidly vulnerable, and it’s all Chloe can do not to break then and there in a fit of absurd honesty.

She sighs, pockets the phone, and says, “Let’s just look at the victory chart again, okay?”

***

She kisses Beca on a bad night—and, really, that’s the only reason she can come up with for doing it at all. It’s a stupid move, idiotic, even, a stunt she knows better than to pull…but it’s just been so damn _hard_ lately, juggling everything this way.

It’s dramatic, and it’s foolish, but Beca has been so much brighter lately—tense, and awkward, and tough-shelled as ever, because that’s who she is (Chloe sees that now, and wonders how she didn’t before, how she ever could have thought Beca—with her insanely huge headphones and her DJ excitement and her unexpected cup tricks—could be molded into anything but  _this_ ), but brighter all the same. Even though Aubrey has taken to flat-out ignoring her at rehearsal, and even though Jesse is still refusing to even swing by her place for a friendly hello (not that Chloe misses him even a fraction of a compassionate amount, because, _duh_ ), and even though the Bellas are actually seeming to get _worse_ with every passing week—

Beca smiles when she cracks open the door to find Chloe standing with hands folded, feet shuffling against the carpet. It’s a real smile, honest and a little bit bold, with that angled edge that Chloe can’t stop loving, and when she ushers Chloe inside, there’s a dash of eagerness she never would have anticipated months ago.

They’re supposed to be going over the hand motions Beca can never seem to keep straight in her head, but somehow, they end up nestled on that stupid little couch, knees bumping together, with Chloe venting about everything that has gone wrong this year. Last year was bad, she declares with a wealth of frustration she shouldn’t be letting herself reveal, but this year is incredible—incredibly out of alignment with everything the Bellas are supposed to be.

“Here we are,” she says, speaking just a little too fast and loud, “with a team of amazing women with amazing voices—I mean, have you _listened_ to you?—“

Beca has the grace to go slightly pink around the ears, but fails to interrupt. Chloe might love her all the more for it. Aubrey interrupts _everything_.

“—and we don’t showcase _any_ of it. All we do is the same thing, over and over, because it’s what _she_ needs. And I’m her best friend, right? So I’m supposed to be there, no matter what, no matter how I feel or how stressed out _I’m_ getting, or how my throat—“ She swallows, shakes her head, sucks in a breath. “All I want to do is sing, not handle daily meltdowns for the rest of my life.”

It sounds over-dramatic, even to her own ears, and she knows she ought to be embarrassed by it all—but somehow, with Beca’s eyes fixed on her, she can’t seem to remember why she’s spent all year holding that in.

Beca doesn’t say a word, or reach for her hand, or do any of the things a normal girl would do at this point; she simply sits still, her fingers toying with the blanket spread across her knees, and waits. It’s the most awkward thing in the world, Chloe thinks, and yet so beautifully _Beca_ : the feigned ignorance of social cues, the inability to read the next logical step on the air, and the vague disinterest that makes what should be insulting unnaturally alluring instead. Aubrey would never be like this, quiet and thoughtful and patient. Aubrey doesn’t know how.

She loves Aubrey, she truly does; it’s the kind of love that stems from similiarity, from a shared desire to be something bigger than one, to be phenomenal. It’s the love that spreads from someone outgoing and enticing, the kind of love that sends you tumbling into bed without thinking about the consequences of the next morning. It’s a stupid kind of love, and she doesn’t know what she would do without it.

But when it comes to Beca, and her sharp little smile, and the way her hair sprawls across her forehead when she tilts her chin toward the floor…

She’s kissing her before she can collect herself, her hands propping on either side of Beca’s face on impulse. There’s a voice scream-singing in the back of her mind for her to stop, to run, to rewind this moment and keep her feet set firmly on the ground, but it’s far too late; her fingers are already winding into soft dark strands, the lines of her palms memorizing the warm comfort of Beca’s cheek. Her lips part in a sigh, and Beca pushes against her—not away, but _into_ her for just one unreasonably wonderful moment—

And then she’s reeling backward, or maybe it’s Chloe who’s coming to her senses—it’s hard to tell around the heady buzz in her head—and all they can do for a long, ugly beat is to watch one another. Careful, uneasy, and silent.

The silence is the worst part, Chloe decides even as her mouth begins forming clumsy apologies, her tongue flicking out each word as it tries to forget the brief tingle of Beca’s mouth around her own. Silence is Beca’s world, the one she so painstakingly shuts everyone out of, the one Chloe doesn’t belong in for even a second.

She angles herself away, facing the wall, feeling her face burn with shame and want and fury. Beca doesn’t reach for her, doesn’t say a word, just sits there with her hands clasped in her lap and her teeth sinking into her lower lip.

Chloe has never been so unsurprised when, not too long after the fact, Beca frustratedly hurls her Bellas membership into the gutter.

***

They don’t speak for weeks; there doesn’t seem a point to fighting it. They’ve lost, and Chloe’s got her hands full with Aubrey’s latest meltdown—one that resembles blind depression more than her usual manic control, which makes it unbearably difficult to navigate on top of her own issues. In the meantime, Beca pretty well disappears off the face of the earth. Spring Break comes and goes without a word or a text (a fact which stings all the more when she’s stretched out in a hospital bed, thumbing through the playlist of Beca’s mixes on her iPod), and the best she can say is that at least her throat feels a little less strained.

Well; second best, maybe, after the message from Aubrey that sounds—for the first time in too long—like her old friend is back in action. The text comes in all caps, exuberantly misspelled, and it’s all she can do not to shriek upon reading it. They’ve got another shot, another small, amazing chance to do things right, and this time—

 _We’ll be bulletproof_ , she finds herself thinking wryly, and shakes her head at herself. They won’t be. It’s stupid to think anything will have changed. Aubrey is already sending her page after page of ideas, all of which sound dangerously overdone, and with Beca out of the picture…

What Aubrey needs is a challenge, someone who will push her buttons, and if Beca won’t be the one to do it, Chloe’s not sure who else there is. Aubrey doesn’t listen to anyone at the best of times, much less when she’s on the verge of her literal last-ditch effort for the top of the heap. Aubrey doesn’t care what anyone thinks.

Except for her. It’s the best shot they’ve got at waking their captain up, though she wishes like hell it could go another way. Fighting with Aubrey won’t be pleasant. It might not even help at all, and for all she knows, by the end of it, they might be over for good. She’s already lost Beca; it’s hard to tell if there’s a point in risking her last best friend in the world over something so trivial.

Except it isn’t trivial, not for the two of them, and not for the others—the ragtag mix of young women who _need_ this at least as much as they do. If she can try…

Trying hasn’t really gotten her far lately, but she can still hear Beca’s voice ringing in her head— _It’s okay, you don’t have to pretend you get a say_ —and she can still feel the tentative pressure of Beca’s lips slanting upon her own, and suddenly, she knows it’s time to step up. Sometimes, she realizes, being the best friend, the glue, the thing that holds a person together when nothing else can, is less about the support and more about an ice-cold slap in the face.

Aubrey’s had this coming for a good long while, and who else can care enough to give it a shot?

(Which doesn’t mean she doesn’t send one pleading message—just one, short and sweet and desperate—for the only calvary she can possibly trust. Because doing this alone? Is just too scary for words.)

***

It all goes to hell in a heartbeat, and suddenly, there’s Beca: standing before them with a bewildered expression and a sturdy voice of reason. She’s more beautiful than ever, and Chloe can’t resist the instinctive grin that spreads until her whole face aches. They haven’t spoken in weeks, and maybe Beca kind of hates her now—who ever knows what’s going on in that head?—but she’s _here_ , which means she _listened_ , which means she at least cares about what happens to them as a team, even if she can’t care about—

The mash-ups they practice are inspired, and Aubrey looks kind of sheepish and excited at the same time, and by the time they reach the Lincoln Center, Chloe can hardly remember what they looked like a month ago. Hair down, eyes bright, clutching at each other in blind anticipation, they are more in sync than they’ve ever been—maybe more so than any Bellas in the history of acapella, in fact.

It’s all thanks to Beca, Chloe thinks, watching her carefully from the corner of her eye. Beca, who is stunning and sexy and wearing that crooked little half-smile, in jeans that hug tight and a blue button-down, clutching a microphone in one small hand. Beca, who glances sideways at her and lifts her eyebrows, looking in that moment not like the girl who was taken unawares by a friend, but like a beautiful woman on a mission.

She wants to pull her aside before their set—just for a minute, just to apologize, or to plead temporary insanity, or _something_ , and it’s so weird how violent the compulsion toward guilt is over something like this, when their whole friendship kicked off with her creeping on the poor girl in the _damn shower_ —but there isn’t any time. Truthfully, even if there was, she’s not sure she would have the guts to pull it off. Beca looks so little like the fierce, sardonic young woman she first met, but there’s something vastly intimidating about her right now all the same.

Sometimes, she just isn’t strong enough.

She settles for letting Aubrey squeeze her hand until the bones creak together, and whispers, “We’re going to be _awesome_.” Aubrey gives her a tight, watery smile.

“Aca-awesome,” she repeats, almost self-mockingly, and Chloe releases a high-pitched giggle laced with nerves. Across the way, she sees Beca glance up, and smile distantly. Her heart clenches.

They _are_ awesome, because it turns out Aubrey is a really excellent choreographer when she lets herself go, and because Beca sincerely knows what she’s doing when it comes to mixing and matching musical genres. They slay, each move turning seamlessly to the next, Beca’s fist punching the air as her voice soars to the heights of the auditorium. Chloe has never heard an audience roar like this before, and it’s incredible how the sound manages to trace through every last nerve in her body. She sings around a grin that hurts to wear, and when they hit the last note and collapse into a full-body, ten-person hug, she wonders if anything can ever match this inconceivable high.

They tumble off the stage in a fit of laughter and shrieks, and it takes her a good couple of minutes to realize Beca is no longer standing in the middle of it all, getting her back pounded by Amy, her hair ruffled by Stacie, her arms held aloft. She stands apart, arms folded across her chest, looking proud and weary and more beautiful than any one person has a right to be. Chloe runs a hand through her hair.

Aubrey nudges at her, smiling in a way Chloe isn’t quite used to yet: like she’s testing the waters, gauging other people’s feelings before plowing ahead. It’s a whole new Aubrey, one who could stick around for a week or forever. Impossible to tell this early, but Chloe is willing to wait. That’s what best friends do, she reasons.

Best friends also, apparently, shove you toward the girl you’ve been into all year long without a word about it. Aubrey is, without a doubt, the best friend she’s ever had.

Still—she would sort of rather not dampen her high with this conversation just now.

Beca is watching her steadily, serious-eyed, her hair a rumpled mess across her sweaty forehead. She looks exhausted, and happier than Chloe’s ever seen her.

“That was—“ Chloe shakes her head, hands patting against her own thighs as she searches for the word. “Amazing,” is the best she can come up with in the end. It’s hard to think with Beca looking at her this way, searching her, lips quirked at the corners like she’s not quite energetic enough to truly smile.

“Totally,” she answers. Then, with a burst of cockiness Chloe isn’t prepared for: “Told you it paid to be risky.”

She laughs, caught by surprise. “We couldn’t have done it without you.”

Beca’s head bows an inch, her gaze unwavering. “You would have managed.”

“No,” Chloe insists, hand swinging up to catch on Beca’s elbow. They freeze there for a beat, Chloe’s head spinning with the memory of electricity and fire and hope. She chokes down the urge to beg, plead for forgiveness, for everything to go back to the way it was. “You did it,” she says instead, and tightens her fingers around the crook of Beca’s arm. “You were fantastic out there.”

Beca shakes her head, looking for all the world like she’s laughing at some private joke. Chloe sighs.

“Listen. About that night—“

“We don’t have to talk about it,” Beca interrupts. Chloe’s brow furrows.

“We haven’t talked in, like, a month,” she points out, stung. “We need to talk about _something_.”

“We don’t,” Beca insists, stepping forward with one foot, and then two, until she’s as far into Chloe’s personal bubble as she can get. Her jaw works, eyelashes thick and dark against porcelain skin. Unbidden, the memories flow back: standing in the faded tile of the shower, pushing drunkenly close at initiation night, surging forward on the couch the night everything was undone—

“We don’t have to talk at all,” Beca tells her softly, bowing until her forehead rests against Chloe’s. “I’m not good at talking.”  
That much is true; Chloe can’t imagine a Beca who _does_ talk, who lets out her feelings the normal way. She’s pretty sure she wouldn’t like that Beca so much, not the way she likes _this_ Beca, with her cocked eyebrow and the bands around her wrists, and the exhalation that swirls against her lips.

“What are we doing, then?” she asks breathlessly. Beca’s nose bumps hers softly.

“Dancing,” Beca whispers against her lips. Her hands smooth across Chloe’s hips, curling around the dip of her jeans and pressing hesitantly to skin. She holds steady for a second, taking in a final breath like some deep sea diver giving up on solid ground—

The whoops and hollers of their teammates echo behind them as the winners are announced, and somewhere inside, Chloe is pretty sure she heard _their_ name ringing to the rafters. She’s pretty sure she can hear Aubrey screaming, and Amy incoherently crying out, and the thump of eight pairs of feet racing across the stage.

But the only thing she can feel is the weight of Beca’s hands on her hips, one sliding around and up to press at the small of her back, her lips parting hopefully. Tiny Beca, who is so much stronger than she looks, and so much _better_ at all of this than anyone could have imagined. Beca, the bane of her best friend’s existence. Beca, who kisses like she sings, with all the confidence her reputation demands.

It wasn’t the plan, to fall for the alt girl with the crooked smile and the earrings and the tattoos. It wasn’t the goal, to spend half the year fighting to keep the greatest friend she’s ever had in one emotional piece. It wasn’t her intention, to be anything but glue.

But they’ve won. And Aubrey’s smile is so wide, Chloe can’t imagine it ever fading again. And Beca is laughing into her mouth, humming the chorus strains of “Titanium” onto her tongue. And dammit—

This ending makes the whole ride worth its weight in madness.  
  



End file.
